Seven Takes on a Saturday

1.
I want to thank everyone so so much for sharing the miscarriage posts from the beginning of the week and for all your words in the comments.  I have been praying for all of you.  Please pray with me for a few people with very recent losses who are grieving right now.  Life is so brutally hard sometimes but the rest of us will do our best to hold you up while you are down.  Your children will not be forgotten.

2.
So I'm no longer spending time on Facebook which I won't yammer on about again except to say that sometimes it's really hard and I miss people.  I also miss a lot of the current internet drama and what is infuriating people at the moment.  But from what I gather via other blogs is that it seems that there's been a whole working mom vs. stay at home mom thing going on again.  So here's my contribution to that:

"While it must be recognized that women have the same right as men to perform various public functions, society must be structured in such a way that wives and mothers are not in practice compelled to work outside the home, and that their families can live and prosper in a dignified way even when they themselves devote their full time to their own family.

Furthermore, the mentality which honors women more for their work outside the home than for their work within the family must be overcome.  This requires that men should truly esteem and love women with total respect for their personal dignity, and that society should create and develop conditions favoring work in the home."

(Blessed John Paul the Great, Familiaris Consortio, 23)

That is all.

3.
Lightening things up a little...
Do you have a bottle deposit law in your state?  It's quite ridiculous, really.  (For those of you lucky people who do not, you pay an extra fee for certain types of bottles at the checkout and then if and when you return them to the store for recycling, you get those nickels and dimes back.)  I mean, why bottles and not everything?  (No, New York, that wasn't a serious suggestion.  No ideas, please.)  Most of us have curbside recycling now which makes the whole thing a bit silly and just another hidden tax because who has the time or energy or conviction to save all their bottles and then remember to take them back to the store with you?  Answer:  This girl.  Because darned if I'll let the state take more of my money.


4.
In news that is really only exciting to us, our new windows were finally installed!  Since we've lived here we've never been able to open the windows in the back half of the house which included Brian and my bedroom, the nursery, the kitchen, the bathroom, and the utility room.  Some of them were  painted closed and the ones that weren't were not safe for opening because they had no screens which made them an enticing opportunity for toddlers, bats, and assorted other creatures from God's beautiful earth.   It got hot as heck in the summer (seriously, over one hundred degrees a few days...) and required plastic and extra space heaters in the winter.   Brian installed the four tiny upstairs windows and we had to have a company do the the three bigger ones downstairs and the one in the nursery because they are arched at the top and no one carried the sizes available to us laypeople.  Which was more than you ever wanted to know about our windows but yay windows!

5.
I feel a moral obligation to revisit my statements about the love I professed for Trader Joe.  After again going there the other day I realized that some of their prices are not as low as they used to be and I'll still have to suck it up and get to Aldi's (and maybe even send Brian to...Wegman's) at least once a month.  Their cheese especially was waaaay over what we can spend and we likes our cheese here.  They still rock with their dry goods and a lot of their produce and beer and tortillas and peanut butter, though.  So while they will not be the grocery panacea for which I had dreamed I am still over the top psyched that they are here.

Misty asked what my favorites were so here are our top:
-TJ's Salted Creamy Peanut Butter  (Their pb is the ONLY natural peanut butter that is worth eating.)
-Whole Wheat Tortillas (Their tortillas are the only tortillas I've ever found that don't have a whole host of preservatives and conditioners added in that make them last 37 years on a shelf.)
-TJ's Antiplaque Toothpaste with fennel, propolis, and myrrh.  (The taste takes getting used to but now I love it.  Flouride free and cheaper than any other natural toothpaste out there.)
-TJ's Party Size Meatballs (We love them for meatball sandwiches.)
-TJ's Stoned Wheat Crackers (Just super good and at a great price.)
-TJ's Natural Beef Hot Dogs (Hot dogs are a special treat around here since studies have shown that the cheap conventional ones are one of the scariest foods a kid or pregnant mother could eat.  But the boys love them so we get these ones that don't have all the nasty cancer chemicals in them for special occasions.)
-TJ's Honey and Oatmeal Soap (Two bars for less than three dollars and it is the only soap that my face responds well to.)
-TJ's Salmon Oil, Calcium/Magnesium/Zinc, and children's vitamins (The children's vitamin's doubled in cost in recent years, though.)
-They are great for special treats and holidays, too.  (Their candy is dye free and I love buying a few special new treats during holidays with a little less guilt.)

6.
Thought I'd share the link for the All Saints' Day Scavenger Hunt I made up and have used the last few years at our party since it's coming up and soon!  I'd love to hear from you if you use it!


More game and activity ideas can be found here as well.

7.
Today our family (and by our family I mean all of us minus one sickie on the couch) ran (and by ran I mean all sort of propelled ourselves in various forms of semi-frontward type of motions) the Run for the Little Flowers Virtual 5K!!  We did it!
Proof:



Sorry for the bright redness...my camera seems to have a hard time with red.  Is that a thing I can fix?



No, the boys did not do the whole thing.  Brian and I took turns lapping them and we made use of the stroller as well.  But it made me realize what a cool thing it would be to do again as a family and also that I would really like to go off and rescue and take in all the orphans.  Also, I need to exercise more and I'm sadly out of shape.

Thanks, Katie, for all you do to organize this and for giving the motivation to be a part of it.

See Jen for more Quick Takes...

3 comments

  1. Loving those run pictures :) And... I just convinced my husband to go and at least check out the prices at Trader Joe's...we always just assume we couldn't afford it in our grocery budget. I am excited to go fancy shopping because, let's not lie..aldi's is not the best shopping experience.

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  2. Ok, love the pictures from the run!! Thanks for posting!

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  3. Yeah windows that open and when closed keep the cold out!!!!
    Great pictures, too.

    Grandma in Chicago

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